Blogging cornerstones revisited
In my last post about what I consider to be cornerstones of blogging, I mentioned interacting with the community and soliciting direct and immediate feedback. I took Seth Godin to task for not allowing comments on his blog (as did many other bloggers out there). I felt that by doing so he was shutting down the conversation and not practicing what he preached. I am a firm believer in open conversation and the ability to riff off each other in the comments and create a greater extension of your initial post. That’s one of the beautiful things about blogs.
However, I should have taken a bit of time to think about the larger issues of “what constitutes engagement” and is there only “one right way” to do so; I was mistaken about how he engaged the community. Seth dropped me a line to clarify how he interacts with his audience and why he has chosen to do so and it gave me some food for thought in terms of what our definitions of interaction and engagement are.
Seth mentioned that he takes the time to respond to direct emails and monitors the trackbacks from his blog on a regular basis. From his perspective one-on-one interaction is a good way to engage with his community and ultimately a more productive use of his time than trying to respond to comments from anonymous bloggers (let alone controlling spam and monitoring inappropriate posts). And that’s not a wrong perspective. It’s just a different one. It doesn’t mean he is ignoring the conversation, just participating in it differently.
I can understand how, as bloggers, we tend to want immediate and direct feedback and interaction, and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the ability to communicate with those across the country, or around the world and exchange ideas out in the open is a wonderful thing. But it’s not the only way of doing things. I think there is room for both kinds of community interaction, depending on your goals.
Ultimately both methods (and I’m sure there are many more – podcast messages, skype, etc.) only work if you have the cornerstones of community engagement and relationship building on blogs – authenticity and feedback to begin with.
[photo credit: kay-d on Flickr]
“Seth mentioned that he takes the time to respond to direct emails and monitors the trackbacks from his blog on a regular basis. From his perspective one-on-one interaction is a good way to engage with his community and ultimately a more productive use of his time than trying to respond to comments from anonymous bloggers (let alone controlling spam and monitoring inappropriate posts). And that‚Äôs not a wrong perspective. It‚Äôs just a different one. It doesn‚Äôt mean he is ignoring the conversation, just participating in it differently.”
See on the surface that SOUNDS good, but the problem is this: By not allowing comments on HIS blog, Seth is forcing his readers to give their feedback on THEIR blogs. Which, of course, means that almost all of them will link BACK to Seth when they do.
Seth is no marketing dummy. He knows that turning off comments is a goldmine for linkbait back to his blog. Others have noticed this as well, as I have stopped linking to his posts, and others have removed him from their blogroll because of this.
I think Chris from Shotgun Marketing summed it up best: “And I’ll tell you the real reason that I think he doesn’t have comments….If you either agree or disagree with his blog, you have to do a post (with link!) on YOUR blog. No wonder he’s Top100.
He does have comments. He just has them hosted on everyone else’s blog.”.
Posted on 23-Jun-06 at 1:43 pm | Permalink
Mack, I get what you’re saying and can appreciate it, and I agree that for sure, seth is no dummy in terms of the impact on rankings all the trackbacks generate. But at the same time, if he does personally engage with you in emails or in comments on your blog, why is it necessarily wrong to move the conversation in that direction?
Don’t get me wrong, I love comments and the free flow of ideas but I can appreciate having a one-on-one dialogue as well.
And… trackbacks also help your own blogs rankings with Google, so it’s not totally a one-way street although it is definitely skewed in the blog being linked to’s favour for Technorati.
Posted on 23-Jun-06 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
Of course, the problem with being a marketer is that everyone also thinks you’re a liar.
If my intent was to climb the technorati list, Mack would be right. But I haven’t had comments since the first day, five years ago. Surely I’m not that good an oracle of the future.
I know it’s hard for you to take my word for it, but there you go… the reason I don’t have comments is that I don’t like what they do to my head. Maybe it goes back to a bad high school experience, but I feel like the noise level just gets too high.
I understand if you don’t want to read a blog without comments, but please, Mack, respect my right to have a blog that works for me… I’m sorry if it doesn’t work for you.
Posted on 23-Jun-06 at 2:22 pm | Permalink
“Of course, the problem with being a marketer is that everyone also thinks you‚Äôre a liar.”
Many people do think this way. But that’s because many marketers isolate themselves from their communities. That’s why I constantly preach about the need for marketers to join their communities, because when that happens, both parties begin to understand each other.
“If my intent was to climb the technorati list, Mack would be right. But I haven‚Äôt had comments since the first day, five years ago. Surely I‚Äôm not that good an oracle of the future.”
No but while you turn off comments, you reply to emails, and as we are seeing here, trackbacks. So you DO encourage feedback, but not on YOUR site.
That seems to be a disconnect, and it suggests to me that you encourage feedback on OTHER sites, so that way people will continue to link to YOUR site, and then that feeds traffic back to YOUR site, where readers are exposed to YOUR message, but don’t have the ability to question your ideas.
So basically you are using other blogs to funnel traffic back to your website, obviously as a tool to help you sell books and get speaking engagements.
At least that’s what it appears is happening. Since you won’t talk to your community Seth, we can only guess what is really happening. If you don’t want to join the conversation, that’s your perrogative, but you can’t then get upset when it takes a course you don’t like.
“I understand if you don‚Äôt want to read a blog without comments, but please, Mack, respect my right to have a blog that works for me‚Ķ I‚Äôm sorry if it doesn‚Äôt work for you.”
Of course you have every right to do whatever you want with your blog! I respect that, and ask that you also respect my right to comment on your actions, just as you have every right to comment on mine.
Also, you recently posted about how ’safe was risky’. Yet here you also just said that you’ve never allowed comments in the five years that you’ve had your site.
That seems a bit safe, and by your belief, risky, does it not?
Posted on 23-Jun-06 at 5:37 pm | Permalink
“Mack, I get what you‚Äôre saying and can appreciate it, and I agree that for sure, seth is no dummy in terms of the impact on rankings all the trackbacks generate. But at the same time, if he does personally engage with you in emails or in comments on your blog, why is it necessarily wrong to move the conversation in that direction?”
It isn’t wrong at all. My point was simply that if Seth, or anyone else does this, there is going to be the impression that they are doing so simply to drive traffic back to their own site.
But being a HUGE supporter of the community, I really feel that Seth is truly missing out on a goldmine of knowledge from his readers, when he shuts them out and feels that he would have to ‘correct’ them, if he opened up comments. But as he said, it’s his site, and he has every right to do whatever he wants with it.
Posted on 23-Jun-06 at 7:47 pm | Permalink
I guess it all boils down to if there is one definition of community on blogs, or even the definition of a blog to begin with. I know a lot of political “blogs” have commenting turned off (i.e. Wonkette and TPM), yet interact with their audience via email. For me, the turning point in “building communities” vs. having your own weblog was the Scoop software. It is, in my mind, easier to navigate comment flow and have a “less noise, more signal” kind of conversation using that kind of tech than flat comments. Perhaps that’s what Seth means about a “time suck” vs. the interpretation he would need to “correct” the comments… we have to acknowledge that seth most likely gets way more email than most and has since he first published a book, long before blogging came on the scene. I would think that may have something to do with his expectations on how long it would take him to manage comments on his blog while continuing to respond to emails, write books, give presentations, and be a thought leader (which in my opinion is why people talk about — trackback — to his blog). There are only 24 hours in one day unfortunately.
I am of the same mind as you Mack in terms of the value of opening up the convo and building the community, as I mentioned in my original post, but I can also see that there is no one “right way” to do so (as with anything in marketing actually!), and am willing to give seth the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Posted on 24-Jun-06 at 10:54 am | Permalink
[...] innovate. integrate. ignite. « Blogging cornerstones revisited [...]
Posted on 26-Jun-06 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
auiskakt
vuidlknvk vdsyhhxek jryygpmdhk
Posted on 20-Jul-06 at 10:19 am | Permalink
[...] I ask these questions because recently there have been attempts to define what is a conversation, what is not, and it all seems to me to be a waste of energy. I touched on this before in my post on blogging cornerstones, and the same issues keep popping up surrounding the “correct” way to interact. [...]
Posted on 10-Nov-06 at 6:43 pm | Permalink